


The Sun Will Set For You

by nb_vint



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Character Study, Fluff that turned into Pining, I dont know just let the boys be happy, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-13
Updated: 2016-09-13
Packaged: 2018-08-14 19:58:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8026945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nb_vint/pseuds/nb_vint
Summary: "The small town boy with too-big dreams. Jack was someone who took the sun from the sky, embodied it, and then put all the other stars in the sky to shame. Better yet, he was pretty."
Or, Gabriel trying to survive SEP injections and waxing poetic about Jack Morrison.





	The Sun Will Set For You

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you Gray for being the beta all writers dream of and giving this bad boy a title.

If Gabriel were more poetic, the darkness appearing like a bruise in the sky would be a perfect description for how he felt. Being part of the Soldier Enhancement Program wasn’t easy, made harder still by the fact that every step of the way he felt like he needed to earn it. Being the best was never the best when you were just a kid from the inner city with skin too dark to appease the higher-ups. Who decided what was best? Not him, not those like him.

The simple truth was that Gabriel was the best. The records showed it, the scores showed it, the sweat that poured down his back when another day in the field came back with a tick mark for success was touted for all the world to see. For all the world to still deem not enough.

He wasn’t bitter. Tried not to be bitter. The taste of bile in the back of his throat as he swallowed down another day of chemicals and injections was bitter enough to last him the rest of his life.

These chemicals were too much like rage, clogging his veins and pouring out of the holes in his body that were torn open by a government who said he wasn’t enough and always asked for more.

This hurt. This hurt worse than knowing he had to get through it for the sake of proving something no one should ever have to prove. A right to existence, a right to say that there was glory in those same veins that seemed to be carving hell through the pathways that were paved by one too many injections.

This hurt so fucking bad.

The feeling of sweat as his body metabolized whatever the fuck was pumping through him was almost enough to make him gag. He was too sensitive for the feeling of the steady drops running down the length of his spine. The lights were too bright, his head felt like it was trying to pound a new orifice through his frontal lobe. He was sensitive enough to actually gag at the mental image of that. Sure, kill a few hundred men and don’t blink too long at the blood it painted across his eyelids, but get one migraine and Gabriel was ready to implode.

Not even self-deprecation could help cope with this.

Gabriel wished he was sentimental enough to take pain and turn it into some kind of morality lesson. Maybe motivate him to be better or some shit. All he could really think about was that if he didn’t get water into his system he was more and more likely to start screaming.

Thankfully, the corridors he had to pass in order to reach the communal kitchen lacked the usual din created by soldiers trying to get their minds off of their reality. His slow gait was the only sound he could hear in his vicinity, the overbearing loudness that his new enhancements provided could only vaguely make out the call of cicadas past the reinforced windows of the military housing.

The darkness past those windows provided a blanket he didn’t know he needed. The subdued lighting in the halls and the lack of sun in the sky made the fire in his veins more bearable than anything else he could’ve asked for. If only those damn water bottles were more easily accessible, he could almost convince himself that he would come out of this unscathed.

Walking into the kitchen came with the expectation of solitude, but not everything in life panned out the way he wanted it to. The quiet breathing on the couch was grating after the gentleness of his walk, and turning a quick 180 would’ve been the better option if Jack hadn’t already turned to watch his miserable shuffle through the doorway.

Usually he was elated by the presence of the other man. A quiet kind of elation that he masked if not for the expression in his eyes.

Jack was special.

The small town boy with too-big dreams. Jack was someone who took the sun from the sky, embodied it, and then put all the other stars in the sky to shame. Better yet, he was pretty.

Gabriel knew what it was like to think the sun and stars of a boy, he also knew what it was like to keep it quiet. The deep dark secret that went bump in the night up until he got big enough to back up his love with a mean right hook.

People seemed to expect violence from him, but the tragedy of it was that he only ever savored it when it was directed at those who sought to harm those bright spots in his life. He knew what it was like to be the elephant in the room, the token other in a world of us versus them. So he got good at not letting down those who needed him. The strength in his bones, in his very marrow, went beyond chemicals cooked in a lab. It came from an unshakable conviction that who and what he was was a product of his own making. That product just happened to love pretty boys with pretty smiles, put into form by a soldier who once loved an Indiana sky.

Jack’s lips were moving and he was still too focused on the sway of the world and the pain in the tips of his fingers and soles of his feet where they made contact with anything solid.

A quick, “What?” served to mask the deeper of his sighs as he tried to juggle acting human with the certainty that his nerve endings would catch fire and he’d be burned from the inside out.

“I said it’s not like you to be up this late. It’s especially not like you to not pay attention to your surroundings.” Jack’s quick grin that bordered on chagrin made it obvious that he hadn’t meant to make so many observations. Gabriel might’ve known what the closet looked like from every which way, but Jack was just now learning to turn on the lights.

“These damn injections are like insomnia in a bottle,” he replied, choosing not to point out the more obvious of Jack’s tells.

“Plus, misery likes company and all that.” Gabriel wasn’t being exactly truthful. He would’ve had a better time coping in solitude, but Jack had a tendency of messing up all his plans. Pretty boy with a pretty smile indeed.

There was room for darkness in him, a need to give the world the same kind of treatment he’d learned to expect from it. But Jack. Jack was the sort of person who radiated a type of calm that made the ache of carrying the world on his shoulders lessen. Gabriel had always been a staunch believer in the fact that all children of men have sown in their sorrows, so they will soon reap, but being a realist bordering on pessimist could only get him so far. The light lent to him by the sun incarnate was enough for him to take a step back and enjoy what he had found for himself in this small room.

He took steps towards the couch Jack had claimed and tried to forget that his nerves were on the verge of short circuiting. Grazing Jack’s knees as he stepped around them to seat himself on the cushions left empty by sunshine boy’s bulk, the pain of contact was less than expected. His small flinch was still too obvious to a soldier trained to notice everything. Jack’s answering look of concern was balm to a weary mind and Gabriel was taking all he could get at the moment. When he finally sat, the small smile of contentment was hard to mask.

“That sure is something,” Jack said, a tone of wonder coloring his response to Gabriel’s expression. Gabriel never really knew what Jack was trying to get at with these small admissions, but the movement of Jack’s lips against his words made everything sound like testament to Gabriel’s lovelorn ears.

Gabriel didn’t want to make a habit of seeing Jack as a remedy. He was here of his own merit, his own ability to stick it to those who had doubted his abilities, but falling in love had a way of making the world shrink to the size of a couch.

“I came here for water but now I’m sitting next to you. How’d that happen?” Gabriel knew he was a terrible flirt. More terrible than flirt, but pushing Jack’s buttons was almost second nature at this point.

“Maybe you just like me that much,” came Jack’s fast response. His snicker at the end made it obvious that he didn’t put an ounce of stock in his words and Gabriel wished he could knock some sense into the boy. Some sense that came in the form of carefully thought out words culminating in a kiss to put an end to all kisses.

Gabriel was still adamant about his lack of sentimentality.

“In your dreams, Sunshine.” The pain in his words could be written off as another symptom of the chemical cocktail running through his body.

His dreams that night after another trek to his room weren’t anything to write home about. The deep sleep afforded to the chronically pained seemed like the exhausted last wish of a more forgiving creator.

Gabriel wasn’t surprised that the few snatches of color he found in those rare dreams were all sunshine and the blue of a small town sky. He didn’t know why he understood where the sky was situated, all he really knew was that sunshine boy’s last words were, “Loving you feels like saying goodbye.”

**Author's Note:**

> Talk to me about Overwatch on twitter, @tevintergods


End file.
